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Consumer
mobile
software roundup:
March - April 2009
- Compiled
March 19, 2009, by Gary Thayer, MobileVillage Editor
Below are
new product releases and updates through April 17, 2009. Prices
quoted are in US dollars.
Multi-Platform
Cellufun
released a new mobile game called Fowl Play. The object
is to protect the eggs in your henhouse from foxes that want to
steal them. You can choose to get a rooster to stand guard for
the coop, but could wind up with more chicks than eggs. Fowl Play
is free and available at cellufun.com. For more information on
Cellufun, see the company's summary
page on MobileVillage.
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A new
customizable ringtone service called mSpot
lets you turn your favorite part of a song into a ringtone.
On mspot.com, you pick a song from over 400,000 titles,
and use the site's simple editing tool to drag the start
and end points to capture up to 30 seconds of your favorite
part, even adding an optional fade in and out feature at
each end if you like. Once your piece is finalized and previewed,
you save and download the cut as a ringtone for $2.99. No
software download or subscription is necessary. To try it,
see mspot.com.
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BlackBerry
CellSpin
Soft's
mobile blogging software is now available for BlackBerry
phones. CellSpin lets you capture images, audio, video and text,
and then publish them to your favorite blogging, social networking,
photo sharing and auction sites simultaneously, including MySpace,
Facebook, Twitter, Google Blogger, WordPress, TypePad, YouTube,
Picasa, Flickr, Live Journal, Live Spaces and eBay, with more
to come. CellSpin is available on BlackBerry World, or at cellspin.net.
Livestrong
has released Calorie Tracker for BlackBerry and iPhone.
Calorie Tracker includes a database of over 525,000 food items
and 2,000 fitness activities. To use it, you search and track
the foods you consume during the day, and Calorie Tracker automatically
tallies your calories, fat, carbohydrate and protein intake.
The software also lets you enter the amount and type of exercise
you perform to tally the amount of calories burned each day.
Calorie Tracker is available on BlackBerry World and the Apple
App Store for $2.99.
PINoptic has released PINoptic security lock app
that aims to prevent illegal access to your BlackBerry phone.
PINoptic promises easy to use security that prevents "shoulder
surfing" people trying to obtain your password. The app
features visual password authentication, using easy to remember
symbols to replace character and number passwords. PINoptic
sells for for
$9.99 for the Storm
and other
BlackBerry models.
iPhone
/ iPod Touch
Concrete
Software
has ported Mobigloo's award-winning BlackBerry puzzle game
Nintaii, to the iPhone and iPod Touch. The Japanese term
'nintai' means "patience," "perseverance,"
or "endurance," and the game lives up to its name,
with 100 levels to work through. The new version for the iPhone
and iPod Touch adds intuitive touch screen and accelerometer
controls. Nintaii is available on Apple's App Store.
Livestrong
has released Calorie Tracker. See details in the BlackBerry
section.
One
Moxie has released Math Flash Cards for the iPhone
and iPod touch. The app features addition, subtraction, multiplication,
and division "cards" that simulate real flash cards.
You can tailor the quizzes for yourself or a specific learner,
and users can answer by multiple choice or keyboard input. The
software tracks time and results, and has a "Learning"
mode that re-queues missed cards and allows several chances.
Math Flash Cards is available from the Apple App Store for $1.99.
ProjectWizards
has announced an iPhone/iPod Touch version of its Merlin
project management app. Merlin helps you view, search, and
store your projects, and lets you host a file on the Internet
or an Intranet to share with other Merlin users. Users can attach
photos as file elements, or view their projects in a Gantt chart.
Merlin can also display and update assignments, and you can
store and view Merlin projects while offline. Merlin for the
iPhone and iPod touch is free and downloadable from the App
Store. The Merlin 2.7 beta desktop version is also free while
in beta.
SplashData's
File Magic file transfer utility is now at version 2.0.
File Magic and its free desktop companion software allows users
to drag and drop any type of file -- including media -- on their
Windows or Mac desktop to their iPhone or iPod touch. The new
version adds a password option, the ability to "beam"
files wirelessly between devices, and the ability to email files
as attachments from File Magic on the device. File Magic is
available from the Apple App Store, and at splashdata.com.
Palm
PearMobile's PearEvents is a new Palm OS
event manager that lets users set alarms for important tasks.
With the help of this program you'll never forget about your
chief's birthday, son's baseball match, or business meeting.
PearEvents also includes Chinese and Zodiac horoscopes that
are shown for the birthday events. PearEvents is $6.95 at
Handango.
SelectCam
promises higher quality video and offers more options than the
standard Palm app. All parameters can be adjusted, yet a single
control on the main form can select the best possible quality
and the most compact file size. Videos are encoded using the
MPEG-4 Part 2 codec, which is more efficient than the H.263
codec used by Camcorder on most devices. The latest version
adds the ability to directly upload to YouTube. SelectCam is
$13.95 at selectcam.com.
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